Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century maps nineteen of today's most vital critical thinkers across design, environment, and technology — tracing the connections that specialisation typically obscures and assembling them into a coherent intellectual landscape for our current crises.
About This Book
McKenzie Wark's Sensoria begins from a provocation: that expertise defined by disciplinary silos is insufficient for understanding late capitalism, ecological collapse, and technological transformation simultaneously. Each chapter delivers a concise, contextualised account of a single thinker — from Keller Easterling on infrastructure to Hito Steyerl on images to Achille Mbembe on necropolitics — while weaving their arguments into a broader critical framework. The cumulative effect is less an anthology than a synthetic map of contemporary theory, showing how culture, design, and technology are not separate concerns but entangled forces shaping the present. Essential reading for anyone working at the intersection of spatial practice and critical thought.
Key Features
- 304 pages of chapter-by-chapter critical introductions to nineteen thinkers across design, environment, and technology
- Thinkers surveyed include Sianne Ngai, Keller Easterling, Benjamin Bratton, Eyal Weizman, Hito Steyerl, Jussi Parikka, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Achille Mbembe, Kodwo Eshun, Lisa Nakamura, Yves Citton, Randy Martin, Jackie Wang, Deborah Danowich, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Cory Doctorow, Tiziana Terranova, and others
- Published by Verso
What You'll Discover
- How thinkers such as Keller Easterling and Eyal Weizman reframe spatial and architectural practice as political and infrastructural argument
- The role of aesthetic theory — via Sianne Ngai and others — in understanding culture under late capitalism
- How environmental and postcolonial thought, from Tsing to Mbembe, reconceives the stakes of design and technology decisions
- A method for reading across disciplines: how connecting intellectual silos produces new ways of knowing the contemporary world
About the Author
McKenzie Wark is a cultural theorist and writer known for wide-ranging critical work across media, technology, and political economy. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 304
- Dimensions: 137 x 211 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781788735063
- Publisher: Verso
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, spatial designers, and academics seeking critical frameworks that connect design practice to contemporary theory in technology, ecology, and political economy.